Smoke and Mirrors
by ForevermoreNevermore
Summary: Future AU. It's a whole new world when you wake up another creature, not even a human anymore. Then you settle into things, and it's like this was where you were supposed to be the whole time.


_Hello thar! This is my first story in this fandom, I have, though, been obsessively stalking it for awhile now. This is just the beginning of a multiple chapter fic that will hopefully have a crime and such, so I hope you like it. I'm still kind of iffy on the characters, but I did my best (and asked an amazing Sherlock author *cough* Johnnydspiratequeen *cough*) so I hope they're right. I hope you enjoy it ^^._

_Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or Sherlock. It belongs to it's respective owner._

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><p>Once, in a time too far away for many to worry about and too near for the appropriate paperwork to be filled out in time, there was a cow. That cow, unoriginally named Bessie Lou, made a rather angry man think. Larry Anderson, that was the man's name, glanced at the subservient mammal fondly and scratched a seedling idea through his slightly grimy dark hair.<p>

"Why must we sacrifice our cows for something like food?" he groused to his coworker while gesticulating wildly at the drooling quadruped. This led him to make a robotic cow, which really didn't go over too well with most markets (most, save for a few small groups whose names I'm not at liberty to release. Do rest assured that they were promptly shut down). Nevertheless, the idea stuck with his coworker, a family friend with a rather boring name. Simon Splunker began his work a week after the rise and fall of the Cow Automaton Empire, and finished it at the appropriate date of three months, fourteen days, and seven house before the opening of Simon Splunker's Mobile Service Robot Inc.

Appropriate because that was the company he himself made to widely manufacture his electronic maids and automatic mannys.

The company quickly took off, leaving Simon to hold on by the overly long shoe laces he wore. It didn't take long to change the name, because no company can have success without a snazzy anagram name which is a double entendre for hidden motives. WORLD DOMINATION, they decided, was too wordy and forward. MEH was hardly an option, so a middle ground was searched for. They tried Splunker's WI-Fi Capable Robots (SWCR), but that sounded like over-powered MePhones. And Sean Connery is not in this tale, so SWCR was most definitely not snazzy and rather a nightmare for anyone with any feeling of hope for the English language. Finally, with a red ribbon falling in two different directions like so many star-crossed lovers at a realist convention, the company's new name reached the ears of the world. SARI. Splunker's Anthropomorphic Robotics Incorporated. The name spread like a wildfire, through the pages of GQ, over a small line of a check as it passes from an avarice hand to a greedy pocket, out of the mouths of night clubbers like the name of the next new drug. And in a way, it was. The world was hooked, like the moon on a string. Or they were addicted to the product anyway. They were called Dispensers.

Dispensers, you see, are merely humans with clockwork (not the organic kind women rage about). They move smoothly and speak normally, one would never know they were robots. Save for their lack of emotion. They do what you ask, even the most absurd things. Simon spent many a year trying to make his babies perfect. A special oil that was the color and consistency of blood. He even concocted a way to get a dead heart beating again (it was easier to supply then all of the metal that would've been needed). Ironically, he thought it would be too much to ask for the whole body.

True as that was, he just couldn't resist it when two bodies literally landed on his doorstep. He didn't know who they were or why they were currently sitting on their heads, but frankly he didn't care. He'd wanted to try out a new type of consciousness.

Emotion.

So before anyone saw, he brought them in, telling his workers they volunteered themselves for the sake of science. He brought the lithe one to the table first.

"He will know love." was his statement to the empty room. "He will know hate. He will be smart," and as a last moment addition, he gave him independence, just to see what it would be like. "You will grow," he then chuckled and patted the dead man humor fully, "'cause that's what computers do." He knew he could do this. Besides, what difference would there be in a brain to a computer? He would be exactly the same, only completely different.

So he worked and worked on that body. Treated it like his greatest prize. The scalpel never wavered or blurred as the line between right and wrong did. The 'y' shaped cut was planned out, but as his scalpel pierced through the flesh, the strangest of sounds elicited itself from the body.

A groan.

The strangest colored eyes opened themselves to the world and in a moment of panic those two, pained eyes met Spencer's, but didn't do much else. Suppose it would've been hard to with a broken neck.

Spencer had never thought to check for life, no one should've survived that fall.

Now his hands shook with anger. "That's not fair, you were my test dummy."

The man on the table opened his mouth, but only rivers of blood escaped. Spencer glared at the red. It was definitely not good for him. Internal bleeding. It could ruin his whole plan. A hurried glance at the floor proved useful, and he grasped the man's shirt. Fine silk... dark purple... he rolled the ends up thinly and shoved them into the man's nose, balled up the shirt and gagged the man.

His only hope was that the silk wasn't breathable.

"There," he thought as he hurriedly went back to make his first incision. "He'll either choke on his own blood or suffocate." And with that, Simon Splunker became a murderer.

Six hours later, he was finished. He would later admit that in his hurry and anxious shaking he might have possibly misconnected a few receptors. But really, what was life but trial and error?

He sat the boy up, tossed away the shirt, and waited for something to happen.

At 6:39 pm on Wednesday of October 17, the Dispenser that would eventually have a name opened it's incredibly odd eyes to the world.

"You're name is Product OA3."

"You're arthritic. Probably from leaning awkwardly away from things to make notes on that table over there, too much strain. The odd gleam in your eyes tells me you've just done something important, and by the way you're looking at me, it has to do with me."

"Very good." But not for long.

"You're product OA4." The man sitting on the table blinked a few times before raising his left hand. His thumb rose to meet his middle finger and he looked as though he were about to snap to a happy jig. Instead, a question rose in his eyes and his head cocked to the side.

"Skin." But that wasn't a question.

Simon put the two together, as he thought brothers should. Simon split the two apart just as quickly. It took him even less time to figure out he'd messed them up somehow.

They weren't right, always analyzing and causing mischief.

So he scrapped it and started over, choosing a rainy day and dumping them in the back alley. OA4 went without much of a fight, but OA3, regrettably, had to be sedated.

So there they sat, two lonely cats in the dog pound of the world. The one with the closed odd eyes had his head leaned over the others, curls pulled out of his dark hair by the mass of the rain water in it. The other was ever vigilante with his back straight against a grimy rock wall. His short hair was matted to his head and at that moment, product OA4 made a promise with himself to avoid the rain and any other form of liquid precipitation that just so happened to fall from the sky.

Of course, there were other reasons. For one thing, even if he was essentially a human, the rain messed with his hard wiring, setting all his thoughts askew and partially from one side of his brain to the next. It flipped him right side up and upside...left?

OA4 frowned at the orange, scrawny alley cat distracting his already scattered mind, then came up with another reason. It ruined perfectly good suits. If his brother ever awoke so he could finally leave this alley, he was going to go buy himself a good suit and never take it off. In fact, he'd invent the first wearable iron just to make that feat possible.

It was at that moment of mental serenity when a small girl walked past the alley, her mother's hand grasped in one periwinkle knitted glove. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold and her brown hair curled around her shoulders, it's style still in tact due to the large black umbrella hanging over her like a trained cloud.

_Umbrellas_, OA4 ruminated, _marvelous creations_.

The girl stopped, her eyes meeting with the discarded dispenser's.

"Mum," the girl stage whispered. "That man's cold."

"That's not a man," the elder whispered back. The girl's eyes widened at the speculation in the statement.

"Really?" and she broke away, drawing close to OA4 impertinently. Her eyes darted to OA3, then back.

"Do you have a name?" she asked. Thousands of names ran through the dispenser's mind, but a final 'no' was his answer all the same.

So the young girl, who's mother dubbed Charlotte, gave him a name.

"Mycroft!" she squealed. She grabbed his hand and told him to follow.

'Mycroft's' jaw dropped and he turned to the other dispenser in the hallway.

"And my brother?" he tried to stop, but his obedience made him follow. Charlotte looked at her mother with a most perfect, big brown eyed puppy dog stare, yet it had little effect. The mother had looked apologetic, but refused all the same.

"We only have room for one. Now you can take Mycroft, the other one, or you can get a new one." She offered, kneeling down to look in her daughter's doe-ish eyes.

"But mum! They're brothers..." she sniffed, and Mycroft couldn't help but think what a good little actor she was. Her free hand was curled behind her back, twitching in hope and annoyance, proving her sobs performed.

"Which one's cuter?" Mycroft's mouth tipped into a small frown, hardly seeing himself as the cute type, and had to refrain from peeling the young girl off when she wrapped her arms around his waist and proclaimed that he was indeed the cutest.

"Then we'll take Mycroft," the mother smiled, taking Charlotte's hand and leading them from the alley. Mycroft hardly saw the civility in taking a person from their brother, but he'd only been in the real world a day so what would he...

"Wait," and he dragged his heels to stop. The world was awfully busy, Mycroft ruminated mildly. He was admiring a rather odd civilian when he noticed her. She was older, about fifty-eight if Mycroft's observations were to be true. _Crow's feet, laugh lines, gray roots;_ older, but kind. _Frazzled expression, grocery bags, milk straining to escape its bag, an umbrella tucked awkwardly around her elbow; _no help, but needs some. _Clothes kept in nice shape, but colors faded; _keeps up appearances, but not enough money to buy a Dispenser. _Small scratches on hand, cat hair on clothes, empty can of tuna cutting through a bag; _she cares and pities small helpless beings. She's crossing the road...

She's crossing the road.

She's crossing the road. She'll be on the side where OA3 could be seen...

Mycroft could have purred.

"Allow me to fix something before we leave," he said as he turned back into the alley. Ignoring their curious stares on his back, he moved OA3 into the line of sight, hissing as his foot fell into a puddle. He shook his foot with a twitch and glanced at his younger (he gets to be older) brother.

How to make a drenched cat of a man look more pathetic... with the smallest hint of a smile he drew his fist back and hit him square in the nose.

Blood squirted as cartilage crunched, but the Dispenser remained unconscious.

"What was that for?" Charlotte asked as they walked down the street, her Mary Jane's glistening.

"Just helping him," he responded, breathing out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as he caught, out of his right peripheral, the woman stop and dive into the alley.

That was the last time Mycroft got his hands dirty. It was also the first, and by no means the last time one of Mycroft's plans came to fruition just as he'd known it would.

Mycroft's life after that was a mess of tea parties, dance recitals, dress up (_Today I'm Artemis, goddess of the hunt._) and upgraded technology. He grew, his emotions functioning full as any human, so it hurt when his family left.

"I'm sorry Mycroft, I just can't afford you anymore," The mother, Andrea, sighed regretfully. The man in question stopped mid-sip and glanced up at the two. Charlotte, a budding young woman of twelve, sat rigid, her brown hair casting a rather dark shadow across her obviously grieved face.

"By the looks of things, you can't afford this place," he commented dryly, the stacked boxes agreeing. Andrea swallowed, grasped Charlotte's hand, and stood.

"We're leaving. And you're not coming." She whipped around to leave, only to be jerked to a halt as her daughter's free hand clamped down on Mycroft's. He gently placed a hand on hers.

"Charlotte..."

"Today," she sniffed and reached her shoulder up to awkwardly wipe at her leaking eyes. "Today my name is Anthea." Then she was the back of a head in a cabby with no destination known to Mycroft.

Something caught his eye as he watched them drive away. It was long, dark, and rather helpful. It leaned against the building like a tall dark stranger, and Mycroft felt drawn in by it's gaze. He grasped the curved handle and examined the tip, swinging it up and into the air.

It was that blessed umbrella, and Mycroft couldn't help but smile fondly at it as he walked away from the house, the umbrella striking onto the cement in time with the jaunty tune he whistled.

It was ten years before Mycroft saw his family again.

Back in that alley a mere three days after creation and a year and a half before one doctor would enter the story, OA3 blinked rain out of his eyes and sputtered blood from his throat. Breathing hurt and he barely kept himself from gingerly touching the throbbing appendage.

Nothing was stolen from his meager person and no other damage had been done, OA4 was missing. His hair was matted to his forehead and his clothes were plastered to his thin frame, he hated to think it but he knew he looked hapless. A bloody face, OA3 rationalized, was the disgusting frosting on the loathsome cake. He had to have been the most pathetic looking thing on the face of the planet.

Or at least the most pathetic thing a certain older woman could remember as her eyes met a pair of alien eyes.

OA3 took in her scratched hand, harried clothes, empty tuna can and pieces fell into place in his mind as she was already christening him Sherlock (after her third cat that happened to fall in the toilet) and hoping he was house trained. Some of the cheaper models weren't.

"Oh dearie, are you lost?"

"I don't get lost."

"Do you have a home?"

"No."

"Would you like one?"

And the rest is, as they say, history.

A year and a half later, as promised, a bent and broken ex-army doctor sat in an overly plush chair, in an overly shiny office, waiting for a man who was supposed to be there at 3:43 for a meeting.

It was 3:42.

That last minute had that doctor tapping his good foot impat-

Oh, there he is.

AS soon as that mousy little second hand had weaseled its way in between the one and the two, the doors flew open and Splunker gave him a whitened smile that really did nothing for the unease growing in his stomach.

"John," Simon greeted exuberantly, his arms widened grandly.

"Simon," John tipped his head and pushed off the ground with his cane. Splunker's smile faltered.

"You're broken." John's blue eyes crinkled at the corners.

"How astute." He was, in fact, spitting sarcasm as well as referring to the fact that the doctor had called him in with full knowledge of his shoulder wound.

"Yes well," The genius sputtered, herding the injured man into the room. "I was informed of a shoulder wound."

"You never asked me. You assumed that's all there was."

Simon almost glared at the doctor. He was supposed to be the perfect candidate. A new brand of soldier. Perfect. A shoulder wound would've been fine.

But here stood a broken down, jalopy of a man with, if the bags under his eyes were any clue, PTSD.

"Do you know why you're here?" He asked, calming his voice to 'civil' and circling John.

"You called me," the blond reminded, sitting down on what he could only assume was an odd modern art table. His hand blindly covered a rust covered stain.

Simon ran his tongue over his canines, much like he did before admitting to his father's first girlfriend after his mother that her services had been terminated.

"You know what I make. And you know what I make could be a great help to the government."

John's eyes narrowed at that statement and his words followed a sigh that said that he'd already made the connection, but was hoping for something else. "Soldiers."

"Precisely," Simon slapped his shoulder lightly, a movement the doctor didn't like one bit.

"So you called me here to be a test dummy?"

"Yes," Simon said regretfully, glancing at the injured soldier. "I suppose I could fix you up a bit."

John shook his head lightly. "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not right for this. You'll have to get someone else. And I apologize for wasting your time, I guessed this was why you wanted me, I shouldn't have come." He stood and made to leave.

Two burly men stepped in front of the door, prompting John to speed up his broken gait.

"Sir?" One began.

"Please move." John stated calmly, his grip tightening around his cane.

"Don't let him leave," Simon's voice bounced around the room and the two men tightened their shoulders.

"Please sir, stop. We don't want to hit a, um," the second man's voice faltered as he took in the cane.

John's grip tightened even more, his knuckles turning white. "Move."

The men advanced on the small doctor. The smallest one let out a chocking gurgle as a certain cane slammed into his throat. John punched the man in the solar plexus and grabbed his shirt. With a grunt the man fell forward and it was all to easy for Watson to kick the back of his knee, then use his falling momentum to shove his face into the ground, effectively breaking his nose.

The other man was a simpler matter, the blond man jabbed his hand out and hit him near the ear, shocking two veins and a nerve and causing the man to fall like a bag of fat cats.

Rather proud that he hadn't lost his edge, John turned to leave (which really was the biggest mistake he'd made in a long while). The full body weight (345 pounds) of the man with the broken nose fell upon him, and the dull throbbing of anesthesia took hold and his legs crumpled to the ground.

"I can't find anyone as good as you, doctor." And those were the last words Doctor John Hamish Watson heard as a human.

"Splunker made easy work of cutting into the unconscious man. The heart still beat melodically beneath his hands, and he took great pleasure in that.

He'd never built onto a live human before.

It, of course, ended badly for him. John awoke once the surgery was over with anger in his heart and Simon's shirt in his fists.

"What did you do?" His fury was so great he could hardly part his jaw, so his words escaped in a hoarse whisper.

"I made you better... I made you..." but he didn't get to finish. John's hand was grasped around a syringe, which was in turn buried in the shoulder of one Simon Splunker.

"I don't know what that was, but I'm not sure I care." He snapped, sliding off the table. He would find, on trying to go out the way he came in, that it was never that easy in real life. The door was locked tight.

"I knew you'd do something like that. People like you are just tooo typical," the voice wound up like a twister.

John whipped around to stare in the dark, dark, too dark eyes of the voice. He'd just noticed the exaggerated grin when what felt like a minor explosion went off at the base of his skull. His mind introverted so that he only, just barely, like seeing the outer regions of a horizon, felt his body crumple like wet paper. Then he was gone.

Once he was, for better lack of a term, rebooting, John Watson felt numb (which is a strange paradox). He was in an abandoned alley, alone, dejected, and vibrating softly.

No... I'm a human... we shiver. And at that thought the growing amoeba that was his brain reached out a tendril and smacked a nerve ending, sending ice spikes down his spine and through his kin, burrowing under the raindrops that plopped onto his body.

Through half-lidded eyes the world was dank. It was filled with garbage. It was raining; no that was sand.

A gunshot flew over his head and he ducked, rolling away from a dune and behind another one. He readied his gun and popped over the dune, ready to shoot-

Army doctor... I was an army doctor. John shook his head to clear it, but it only made things worse. Though he couldn't keep himself from enjoying the sudden absence of the rain.

"Hmm, he has yet to notice my presence. Either he's hi," a hand found it's way under John's chin, giving him such a panic that he jerked his head back into the rock wall hard enough for stars to dot his vision. "Or rebooting." The shadow that enveloped the doctor was too tall and too skinny, the umbrella too wide in comparison. Too right and too smug. His hair was too curly and his cheek bones too high. He was too-too-too-

…

Oh, his brains back up. That alien face with odd, narrowed eyes was closer, staring at him. No, not at him, everywhere. Flicking to one thing, then another and another and-

It unnerved him.

So he did what most doctors did. He examined (the mindless charges would come later). Male, six feet half an inch, once had a broken neck judging from the uneven angle of his neck, so obviously a dispenser. Yet his hand was skin... so another unfortunate victim.

"Who are you?" John asked. The man stood, but never turned his head.

"Mrs. Hudson!" He shouted imperiously. John berated himself for being a doctor and missing something like _that... _then almost banged his head against the wall for thinking he had. A small, older woman tottered into the alleyway, then narrowed her eyes accusingly at the alien... thing.

"I've warned you about running off."

"Yes, yes, now if you'd kindly-"

"Oh." The woman cut into the man's speech. "Who is that?""

"He's a new dispenser, still rebooting, but what's your na-"

"Who are you?" she asked John, looking him over with worried eyes. His mind floundered.

"Um, I'm," then he blinked. Army doctor... one sister... three broken bones (all three from a dare back in primary school)... "John."

"Oh it's a nice-"

"Generic."

"-name." She shot the man a sharp glance. She blinked curiously.

"Are you lost?"

"I'm not a child," John replied, more confused then angry. The woman patted his shoulder gingerly.

"Of course not dearie, of course not. Do you have a home?"

"Yes...?" John faltered for a location. But the only thing that came into his fraying mind was a lonely room. Then a black cat dashed through his mind and, poof, the image was gone, an eviction note posted on the dry erase board of his mind. "No."

"Oooh," the woman cooed sympathetically, her hand snapping up and snatching the umbrella from the pale hand of her companion. He gave and indignant yowl as the rain that had been splashing playfully on John's head transferred and pelted onto his curled locks. It wicked off his wool coat that made him look like a sheep... sheepish? No... it was made out of wool from the look of it.

"We've been trying to find Sherlock a roommate but it seems no one can understand the poor dear." She sighed. "Maybe you'll have better luck?"

John gave the alien man, now dubbed Sherlock, a glance. He was glaring balefully at the umbrella, a dingy cardboard box held by fingertips covering his head.

"Mrs. Hudson," he spoke darkly. "I strongly suggest you give me that umbrella back. He's rebooting, therefor dumb to the world, and wouldn't know-"

The amoeba, still forming the right shape of a mind, snapped up and hit a dangling emotion. John stood.

"I'm hurt, you over exaggerated sheep. I get the umbrella." and thus began, with a hardly concealed smirk from John and a haughty yet unaffected twist of the lips from Sherlock, the grand adventures...

No... lives?

Relationships?

Ah... and thus began the tango that was John and Sherlock. The adventures of two plus Mycroft. And the scheming of Sherlock the cat and just how many hairs it can get in the petri dishes before it gets flushed down the toilet.


End file.
